This secure, restricted-access facility requires that visitors have prior approval to enter, and they must provide a driver's license or passport to gain entry.
The building was finished in 1999, and was designed to critical facility building standards, including a base-isolation system, and back-up power and cooling systems, said Doug Sandy, emergency planner with the Disaster Preparedness Division of the San Francisco Office of Emergency Services and Homeland Security.
The ECC is 34,000 square feet, and includes the police, fire, 911 dispatch center, and the Office of Emergency Services and Homeland Security. The ECC also serves, Sandy said, as the primary emergency operations center for the city and county of San Francisco. The building also contains the control system for the recently completed Emergency Outdoor Warning System, which will be deployed to warn constituents of an earthquake or other emergency situation.
The current Emergency Operations Center (EOC) totals 4,348 square feet, and the setup includes a 1,528 square foot operations room, a 1,572 square foot planning room, a 539 square foot logistics room, a 460 square foot media room, and a 249 square foot policy room.
The San Francisco ECC plans a remodel of its EOC for many reasons -- the media center, and operations and policy rooms lack adequate space; the operations room gets noisy and the traffic flow is restricted; the current operations room configuration isn't conducive to integration among the various branches of emergency responders; there's inadequate video and audio display, no video conferencing, and outdated computers; and lack of a centralized EOC communications and messaging center.
"The construction start date is dependent on completion of the project budget and release of the funds by the Board of Supervisors, hopefully next month," Sandy said. "The final design and bid process will take at least a couple of months.
"The completion date is still not firm because of the timing for the release of funding," he said, adding that the funding will definitely be released by the end of this year.
The entrance to the EOC.
The current EOC layout includes
4,348 square feet.
The operations section is 1,528 square feet,
which isn't enough for emergency
responders to work comfortably.
The 1,572 square foot planning section is shared with the finance section.
The main area of the planning section.
The logistics room is 539 square feet.
The 460 square foot media room isn't large enough to hold a press conference in person.
